Minute Verdict
Windsurf is a VS Code fork with an agent manager built in, and it now sells as Devin Desktop: windsurf.com sends visitors to devin.ai. The free plan still runs agents on a daily and weekly allowance, Pro costs $20 a month and Max $200, and anyone already on the old $15 Pro keeps that price.
Best for: a developer who wants one window for the IDE, a local agent and a queue of cloud sessions, and who will pay $20 a month for frontier models.
Not for: a five-person team that needs single sign-on, which is now Enterprise only, or someone who only wants tab completion from an editor.
From: $20/mo billed monthly, checked November 10, 2026
What Windsurf does
Windsurf is Codeium’s agentic IDE, a fork of VS Code that keeps the code view, the extensions, the keybindings and the language servers a developer already expects. The release of June 2, 2026 keeps all of that and changes the home screen: the Agent Command Center is now the default view, a Kanban board of every session running locally or in Devin Cloud. Spaces group sessions, pull requests, files and context so several agents work from the same material.
The local agent is Devin Local, the harness shared with the Devin CLI, rewritten in Rust and described by Cognition as up to 30% more token efficient than the agent it replaces. It runs in modes called Code, Smart, Ask, Plan and Bypass Permissions, supports subagents and git worktrees, and keeps a sandbox around the commands it runs. Cascade, the previous agent, is still documented as a legacy option, and the migration note said it would remain usable through July 1, 2026.
What sets the IDE apart is the Agent Client Protocol. Devin Desktop hosts agents that are not Devin: Codex, Claude Agent, OpenCode, or an agent a team wrote for itself. Those sessions appear on the same board, inside the same Spaces, and are reviewed the same way. In practice, buying Devin Desktop is buying a cockpit rather than a single agent.
Around the IDE sit the smaller surfaces: Tab completions and inline edits, which the free plan leaves unlimited; Command, the Cmd+I or Ctrl+I prompt inside a file; DeepWiki for reading unfamiliar symbols; Codemaps; browser previews; and Devin Review for diffs. Devin Cloud, the autonomous agent that runs on its own machine, is a separate product sold alongside it.
On this page
What you get for the money
| Plan | Price | What is included | The limit that matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | Light agent allowance, unlimited Tab completions, unlimited inline edits | Limited model choice, and the allowance resets instead of topping up |
| Pro | $20/month | Higher allowance, full model list including Claude, GPT, Gemini and SWE-2, Devin Cloud access | Extra usage is billed at API prices |
| Max | $200/month | Significantly higher allowance, everything in Pro | Same features, a bigger budget |
| Teams | $80/month plus $40 per full dev seat | Up to 200 users, shared sessions, central billing, admin dashboard, priority support | Single sign-on is Enterprise only |
| Enterprise | Custom | SAML and OIDC single sign-on, central admin, VPC deployment, dedicated support | Quote only |
Pro at $20 a month is $240 over twelve months, and it buys one allowance that refreshes daily and weekly rather than a count of messages. The daily budget is deliberately larger than a seventh of the weekly one, so a developer who works weekends can still spend the whole week’s quota. When the allowance runs out, Pro, Teams and Max can buy extra usage at API list prices, while Free waits for the reset.
The Teams line deserves a second read. The $80 covers the team plan, and every developer who needs the desktop app needs a full seat at $40 a month, which also carries $40 of usage across Devin Cloud, Devin Desktop, Devin CLI and Devin Review.
Where it falls short
New buyers pay $20 for Pro. Existing Pro subscribers at $15 keep that price indefinitely, and Teams seats bought at $30 a month stay at $30, so the ladder is two-tier and most articles about Windsurf still quote the old figures.
No allowance is published in tokens or requests. It is token-based, varies by model, and free models do not count against it, so nobody can estimate a cost per task before subscribing. A heavy week is the only way to find the ceiling.
The free plan is a demonstration, not a workspace. Model choice is limited, and the only way past the cap is the next day or the next week.
There is no free trial of a paid plan, and support will not add one. A refund is possible before the subscription is used, which means the decision is made before the first real task.
Single sign-on left the Teams plan. A team that bought SSO as an add-on keeps it, new Teams plans do not, and SSO is now an Enterprise feature.
The JetBrains plugin is in maintenance mode. Cognition warns that newer JetBrains releases can break it, and points users to the Devin CLI over the Agent Client Protocol instead.
The rename is not finished either. Billing, support and the plan management page still answer on windsurf.com, and the Linux packages are published from a repository named windsurf while installing as devin-desktop. Two names for one product is manageable, but it makes receipts and support threads confusing for a finance team.
Windsurf alternatives
- Cursor, from $8 a month on The X Subscription, is the closest rival: an agent in a desktop editor, with cloud agents and code review at $30 and third-party models billed from prepaid credit. Read the Cursor review.
- Lovable, from $25 a month, skips the IDE and builds a full-stack app from a prompt, database and hosting included, which fits someone who wants the result rather than the workspace: Lovable review.
- Base44, from $20 a month, does the same for internal tools and small apps, with a free plan of 25 credits that is the cheapest way to test the prompt-to-app route: Base44 review.
Who it is for: Windsurf
Windsurf suits a developer who already works in VS Code and wants the agent in the same window, with a board that shows what every session is doing. The $20 Pro plan covers that: the IDE, the local agent, the frontier models, and cloud sessions when a task has to run with the laptop closed. The Build and data category covers the rest of that shelf.
It also suits a team standardizing on one client for several agents. The Agent Client Protocol means Codex, Claude Agent and in-house agents run inside the same editor, which is a real argument against installing four of them. A five-person team should compare the $80 plan plus five $40 seats with what it already pays before moving.
It does not suit a solo developer who wants completion and a chat panel: the free plan covers that, and $20 only makes sense once the agent is doing the work. For generating a whole application from a prompt, Emergent is the tool we cover, and it is a different purchase.
How we checked
This is a research review. We have not used Windsurf, so there is no score, no timing and no sample project. Every price was read on November 10, 2026, on the Devin pricing page that windsurf.com now redirects to, and in the Desktop documentation for quotas, plans and the rename. We did not test the app, the agent or a week of quota, so output quality and real cost per task remain unmeasured, and a hands-on pass would settle both. Our how we test page covers what that pass adds, and our editorial policy covers how a page like this is funded.
Timeline
- April 4, 2025: Codeium renames the company to Windsurf, five months after the IDE launches. Announcement
- July 14, 2025: Cognition acquires Windsurf, a week after the founding team and the research team leave. Announcement
- March 2026: the credit system is replaced by daily and weekly quotas. Documentation
- June 2, 2026: Windsurf becomes Devin Desktop, with the Agent Command Center as the default view. Announcement
What to do next
Start on Free and run one real task in a repository you know: ask the local agent to change something, then read the diff. If the allowance survives a normal day, pay the $20 for Pro and use it for a month, which is $240 a year. Move to Max only when the weekly cap is hit twice, and look at Teams when someone has to administer seats, billing and the model list.
FAQ
Is Windsurf still available? Yes. Since June 2, 2026 the product is called Devin Desktop and windsurf.com redirects to devin.ai. Plans, settings and extensions carried over, and existing subscriptions were not repriced.
How much does Windsurf cost? Free is $0, Pro is $20 a month, Max is $200, and Teams is $80 a month plus $40 per full developer seat. Enterprise is quoted. Annual Pro and Teams subscriptions held by existing customers keep renewing.
Is there a free trial? No. Paid plans have no trial and support does not add one. The free plan is the way to test, and a refund is available before the subscription is used.
Did the price go up? For a new buyer, Pro is $20. Anyone already paying $15 for Pro keeps $15 indefinitely, and Teams seats bought at $30 a month keep that rate.
Does Windsurf still work in JetBrains? The JetBrains plugin is in maintenance mode and can break on newer JetBrains releases. Cognition recommends running Devin through the Agent Client Protocol instead.
Is Windsurf legit? Yes. It is the IDE Codeium launched in November 2024, acquired by Cognition on July 14, 2025 and renamed Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026. The product and the company are the same.
Sources
Sources
- https://devin.ai/pricing (checked November 10, 2026)
- https://devin.ai/blog/windsurf-is-now-devin-desktop (checked November 10, 2026)
- https://docs.devin.ai/desktop/accounts/quota (checked November 10, 2026)
- https://docs.devin.ai/desktop/devin-desktop-faq (checked November 10, 2026)
- https://devin.ai/blog/windsurfs-next-chapter (checked November 10, 2026)
Update log
November 10, 2026: first publication, research review. Prices read on the Devin pricing page and in the Desktop quota documentation.
